


empire for ashes

by subcas



Series: incipit [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Human Castiel, Hunter Dean, Incomplete, M/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 08:34:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4953550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subcas/pseuds/subcas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean had tried honesty before, with Cassie, and ended up with a sharp reminder of rule #1 in the hunter's handbook—it's never the best policy. Now he's got Cas and everything's starting to feel a little too close to déjà vu for comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	empire for ashes

**Author's Note:**

> INCOMPLETE
> 
> this is a tweaked version of one of my [unfinished fills](http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/70609.html?thread=24046289#t24046289) at the kink meme:
> 
> _I want Dean and Cas to be in a serious relationship, but with Dean still being a hunter he disappears for weeks on end leaving Cas alone in their apartment except on the few nights he comes back. Dean never tells him where he goes but Cas loves him too much to ever leave, accepting Dean will tell him in his own time. Dean wants to tell Cas but is too aware of what happened with Cassie and thinks it's better not to tell Cas and keep him, unaware that Cas is slowly starting to believe Dean doesn't trust him, maybe even suspects he's Dean's bit on the side._

They’d met at a bar, of all places, not his usual sort of haunt; Cas drinking, theoretically in order to bond with the friends that convinced him to come, but in reality they’d all flitted off, leaving him sitting with his heels up on a rickety barstool, sipping rather morosely at a pint of mediocre domestic beer.

Dean approached him with a smile and nothing but dregs of whiskey in his glass, and Castiel was lost. He was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen, and the first few weeks felt like they must be a waking dream. A fairy tale come true, out of the blue, Castiel given his Prince Charming. Except he knew how those stories ended, nothing so precious came without a hefty price, and he wasn’t ready to be handed his poison apple, too afraid he’d bite into it, no questions asked.

He was a tornado and Cas was swept right off his feet. After a night, Cas gave him his long-held virginity, hot mouths clashing in his hallway after Dean drove them home in his purring monster of a car from the seedy bar. Dean’s fingers like a brand inside of him, making him gasp. After a month, Dean moved his few possessions from his run-down rent-a-day room into Cas’ house. Their house.

Now, it felt like this is where they always were: Cas rolled up in their big comfortable bed, still warm from Dean’s touch, watching as he packs a bag.

“Dean,” He doesn’t like the whine in his voice. “Come back to bed.”

“Sorry, baby,” Dean says, maybe wistful, as he breaks his methodical movements to look back at him, “I can’t. I’ve got a job.”

Cas stretches out luxuriously, naked skin against soft sheets, and sighs, “I’ll get cold without you.”

Dean lets his duffel fall to the floor with a thump and crosses the room with a few quick strides, straddling Cas's prone body. “You know you’re a tease, right?” he says, even as he leans down for a kiss.

“I don’t think it counts as teasing when I always put out,” Cas murmurs against his lips when they break apart.

“Yeah you do.” Dean snickers, drawing his hands down Cas’s bare torso, brushing against the hickies he'd left there earlier.

“I thought you didn’t have any time,” Cas says, arching an eyebrow pointedly.

“Well,” Dean draws out the word, tumbling further into bed, into Cas, “It’s not the end of the world, it can wait for a few minutes.”

*

It’s two weeks and as many phone calls to Anna before Cas sees Dean again.

“Cas,” she sighs down the line, static crackling along her exhale, “I’m worried about you.”

“Anna,” he parrots back, “I’m worried you’re going to get worry lines before you turn thirty for nothing. I’ve told you I’m fine. More than fine. Happy.”

“But you’re not!” she snaps, “If you were I’d stop nagging you, I swear, but I don’t think I can take one more phone call where you’re worried that your _boyfriend_ ,” she says the word like she’s spitting out fire before it burns in her mouth, “is never coming back to you.”

“Don’t lie, Anna, you’ll never stop nagging.” Cas says, fiddling with an egg timer on the kitchen counter. Neither of them ate eggs that required dedicated timing. It was one of those useless bits of clutter whose origins couldn’t be traced and which was never used but couldn’t be thrown away because that would be wasteful and, who knows, maybe someday someone would need it. He sympathized with the egg timer.

“Don’t brush me off, baby brother,” she says, “Have you even figured out what it is he does yet?”

“No.” Cas replies shortly. He could try to evade the question, because he knows Anna won’t like the answer, but he’s never been anywhere as close to as good at lying as she is at ruthlessly finding him out.

And she doesn’t like the answer, it’s clear, as she says, “That’s not _normal_ , Cas. You can’t let him treat you like that.”

Cas shifts uncomfortably on his feet, scuffing his soles on the linoleum tiles he hates, before leaning in to rest his elbows on the counters. “I know, Anna Banana, I just—I don’t even know what _he’s_ doing with _me_. I don’t want to scare him off.”

“He takes off for weeks on end and you’re too afraid to question where he goes? Cas—he isn’t... hurting you, is he?”

“What! Anna, no. He’s not like that.” He hadn’t thought Anna’s worries had grown quite so dark.

He hears the lock turn on the front door and hurriedly shushes Anna, who’s unintelligibly muttering something unsavory about Dean’s character, “He’s home, I’m going to go, okay?”

“Ask him what he does.” He hears, echoing tinnily down the line, before he rolls his eyes and hangs up.

*

Even though he likes to pretend that he doesn’t follow Anna’s every suggestion, _he doesn’t okay_ , a few hours later, with a homecooked meal spread in front of them and Dean smiling gently, crinkling his eyes with happiness, telling him that _it looks great babe_ , Cas decides that tonight he’s not going to let Dean dodge his questions.

He starts out innocuously, asking Dean how his trip went. He tries to sound thoughtfully interested in his partner’s work instead of interrogative. Dean says, “We cleaned up the issue, no problem.”

“Oh, okay,” Cas says, “What was the ‘issue’?” His sarcastic air quotes usage definitely takes the question past curious and straight into bitchy. So much for the subtle approach.

Dean sets down his fork, and memories of Cas’s father doing the same gnaw at his stomach. Nothing good ever followed.

He meets his eyes earnestly as he says, “Cas, this stuff is really boring, trust me.”

Cas wonders if that’s a trick, the eye contact, forming a connection to make the lie go down easier. He wonders when he started wondering if Dean used the same handbook he’s seen before.

Cas chuckles, but there’s no humor in it, a harsh, unpleasant sound. “How am I supposed to trust you when you don’t tell me anything? What do you even do?”

Dean’s reply is short and clipped, a rehearsed answer that gives no information and makes Cas’s stomach turn, “I told you, Cas, I’m an independent contractor.”

Cas bites at his lip before steeling himself, feeling anger heat his resolve, prodding deeper. “Right, but what does that actually _mean_?”

Dean puts down his glass and really looks at Cas, which causes the two of them to be briefly distracted by each other’s faces. “I work for different employers who don’t need someone full time so instead they hire me to help them on a more case by case basis.”

Cas set his jaw. These were bullshit answers, carefully crafted to sound like they were saying something while revealing nothing, and he knew it. If he knew it, then Dean must know it, which meant he’d thought all these empty answers up in advance to hide that he was hiding something, which meant he was _definitely_ hiding something. “Help them do what?

“Security, mostly.” Dean shrugged off the reveal like it was nothing.

Convulsively, Cas grasps at his knife, “That sounds dangerous.”

Dean’s gaze drops and he licks his lips before saying, “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you about it.”

“Well, _that’s_ reassuring,” Cas petulantly spits out, leaning back and taking a large gulp from his wine glass.

“Cas,” Dean reaches out and takes his hand, “I swear, I’m fine. I’m safe.”

He smooths his thumb over Cas’s knuckles. Cas had noticed it before, but now it seems to take on a new light, his work-weathered hands. He’d thought it was from being a mechanic, Dean under the hood of the impala in the driveway, bathed in sun, cussing when his wrench slipped loose and he scraped his knuckles raw. Cas had laughed a little from his perch on the porch, then guided him into the kitchen, pulling out his first aid kit and carefully disinfecting his cuts sealing them with neosporin, gauze and a kiss. Dean had look soft then, tender, like this was an unexpected gesture.

Maybe it was. Maybe he split his knuckles in other ways, on other people’s bodies, maybe those crisscrossing scars were from something more dangerous than a car engine, maybe they hadn’t been weathered so much as _battered_.

“Cas, hey,” Dean says, drawing him out of his reverie, “I’m careful, okay? And I don’t work by myself, I’ve got a couple people backing me up. They’re good, we’re good—the best, even.”

Cas can’t help but roll his eyes at Dean’s braggadocio. “So modest,” he teases, trying to be okay with this.

“Are you doubting my awesome fighting prowess?”

“No, no.” Cas waits until Dean’s mouth is full to continue, “As long as the villain doesn’t decide to make a run for it.” 

He might not have Dean’s muscle mass but after a few too many times of Dean teasing him about their respective fitnesses (one time he couldn’t get a jar open, _one time_ ), Cas decided to bring him along to one of his workouts down at the track and proceeded to whip his ass in every race before finishing with a series of core exercises while Dean laid in the field swearing at him. He smiles beatifically over the lip of his wineglass. It’s always fun to bring it up when Dean starts getting a little cocky.

“Don’t worry, none of them are crazy enough to get up at 6 in the morning to go run sprints.”

“Oh dear,” Cas frowns, wrinkling his nose up in faux-concern, “I guess this is a bad time to tell you that I moonlight as a cat burglar.”

Dean grins outright. “Do you wear a leather catsuit? Maybe we can work something out.”

*

That’s before the night he comes home covered in blood and reassures Cas that it’s not his.

**Author's Note:**

> title is a lyric from the song _Middle Cyclone_ by Neko Case.


End file.
